US presidential hopeful Barack Obama met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday for talks on key international issues.
German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm described the talks as "very open and in depth," adding they were held in a good atmosphere.
The German leader and Obama posed for photographers at the start of their meeting, which lasted about an hour and focused on Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as the Middle East peace process, Wilhelm said.
The Illinois Senator is visiting the German capital to make the key speech of an overseas tour aimed at enhancing his foreign policy credentials for Obama calls for increase of US troops in Afghanistan ...
Bill Clinton says he is backing Obama ... the US electorate.
A small crowd of onlookers gathered outside the chancellor's office in central Berlin where Obama and Merkel held their talks and the luxury hotel where he is staying during his day-long visit.
Security alerts
However, shortly after his arrival at the Adlon Hotel, which is close to both the US Embassy and Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate, a suspicious package triggered a security scare at the hotel.
The hotel's lobby was cleared briefly before the package was examined by explosives experts and declared that it did not represent any threat.
The US senator then went on to meet Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier early in the afternoon.
Obama is to make a 45-minute address on trans-Atlantic relations at an open air venue in the heart of Berlin, speaking under the city's Victory Column to an expected crowd of tens of thousands in the early evening.
"Hopefully [the speech] will be viewed as a substantive articulation of the relationship I'd like to see between the United States and Europe," Obama told reporters in Israel shortly before leaving for Germany.
"I'm hoping to communicate across the Atlantic the value of that relationship and how we need to build on it."
Preparations for Obama's speech were marred after a 40-year man driving a car breached the cordoned off zone where the US presidential candidate is to speak and sprayed red paint around the area.
The man from the southern German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg is now in police custody, pending an investigation.
Election campaigning
While Berlin was in Obama fever ahead of the visit, political commentators stressed that the main aim of the visit was to boost the senator's fortunes in the US presidential race.
In his speech, Obama was expected to seek to revive trans-Atlantic relations that suffered considerable damage under President George W. Bush.
Commentators were watching closely to discern calls for greater European contributions in Afghanistan and to hear the senator's views on pressing Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment program.
Obama is overwhelmingly more popular in Europe than his Republican adversary, John McCain. A recent poll put his German support at 76 percent.
Following his round of engagements in Berlin, Obama is to visit Friday the US Ramstein Air Force base and the US military hospital in Landstuhl, which are both in the western part of Germany.
The US Democrat presidential candidate will then travel on to France. Before arriving in Germany, Obama visited Israel, the Palestinian territories, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq and Jordan.
No German troop changes in Afghanistan
Asked about Obama's recent comments that he would press European NATO partners for more troops for Afghanistan, Merkel said Wednesday that Germany had no plans to go beyond pledges made last month for the NATO-led ISAF mission.
"I can give Barack Obama the good news that we will be boosting the mandate to include 1,000 more troops for the ISAF mission," she told reporters. "We also just took over the command of the quick reaction force (in northern Afghanistan).
"Thus I will make clear that we are not shirking our responsibilities for engagement but I will also make the limits very clear, just as I have done with the current president," Merkel added.
Germany has faced growing pressure to increase the number of troops it has deployed in Afghanistan and to move troops from the relatively calm North of the country to the South where US-led forces are battling tenacious Taliban insurgents.
In response to the calls from the United States and other NATO members, Berlin announced plans in June to boost its contingent in northern Afghanistan later this year by up to 1,000 soldiers to a maximum of 4,500 troops.
The mission, however, is extremely unpopular among Germans and any move to expand the deployment further would likely provoke a voter backlash ahead of general elections slated for 2009.
US
policy continuity
Merkel, who has met McCain on several occasions, said she was keen to sit down with his challenger. She said she was impressed by the grassroots enthusiasm Obama managed to spark during his "bold" and extended Democratic primary campaign.
"From the way he triumphed in the primaries in America, I would say he is a man of many strengths -- physical, mental and political," she said.
Merkel said she was particularly interested in discussing trans-Atlantic political and economic ties with Obama, NATO, climate change and the Doha trade round.
But she said she expected broad continuity in the US stance toward Europe regardless of whether Obama or McCain won in November.
"In general the impact of differences on domestic policy is larger than those on foreign policy," she said. "We will continue to defend our interests and, in specific cases, find compromises."
(Deutsche Welle)
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